How can we make information on climate change actionable for users?

While a plethora of climate data exists, e.g. from observational records or modelling experiments, much of this information remains unused in many cases and targeted action on climate change impacts is not taken. Why is that? What must be done to overcome this persistent challenge?

Climate change largely affects nearly all aspects of everyday life: water, energy, and food consumption, personal health (e.g., diseases, heat stress, allergens), work (e.g., concerning working conditions or commuting infrastructure), safety of life and goods (e.g., concerning natural disasters). Often, climate change strikes by altering the frequency or intensity of extreme events, changing seasonality or compounding multiple stressors temporally and spatially. For adaptation purposes, information on ongoing and expected climate change impacts are thus of utmost importance to, e.g., agriculture, water management, energy production and supply, emergency services, insurance, or health care.

Clearly, the exchange of relevant climate information between scientists, stakeholders and the general public is marked by a gap between what is provided and what is needed in real-world applications.

One of the main reasons is very likely missing communication between scientists and decision-makers. Furthermore, users often have limited knowledge and/or capacities or a different perception of the subject matter to convert the provided, often generic climate data into suitable information for very specific needs. This gap between demand and supply can be described in terms of temporal and spatial scales (e.g., provided information is valid for large areas, whereas users are interested in single fields), variable selection (e.g., when information is sought for variables that are not observed/produced directly), specificity of needs (e.g., climate models being designed for understanding the system instead of specific user applications), and consideration of uncertainty as opposed to the requirement for clear statements on trends.

In order to close this gap, communication between users and scientists requires a two-way format of co-creating (a) a viable form of information exchange and (b) the relevant information itself, while recognising the needs of users and capabilities of providers. This is to ensure that relevant information can be provided to users who are motivated to apply them – without the need for further postprocessing among the users. At the same time, creating data “into the blue” without actual usability can be avoided.

We here describe the offer--need gap and present possible strategies for closing it with examples from a central European region: Within the EU-project ARSINOE, the Main River Catchment, Germany, is one of 9 case studies for which scientists and stakeholders jointly develop strategies for fostering climate resilience. Promoting a productive exchange of climate change information between scientists and users is crucial to this effort.